Today’s Reading List – April 25, 2007 | Article VI Blog

Hotline carries a video of Mike Huckabee on Colbert attacking Romney. In my opinion Huckabee is playing a dangerous game for a candidate that carries a very heavy religious identity. He has never attacked Romney's faith directly, but he has on more than one occasion done what he does here, which is play on Mormon stereotypes, in this case the "Mormons lie" stereotype. On the other hand, he and Romney are competing for pretty much the same voting blocks, so the fact that he would go after Romney hardest is unsurprising.

But imagine, if you will, Hillary attacking Obama, perhaps even with some credible evidence to the assertion, on the grounds of "'gangster' campaign tactics"…

I think Barbara Bush wanted to be helpful…

Archbishop Charles Chaput writes a long defense of the religious voice in the public square. In it he writes:

Only one question really matters. Does God exist or not? If he does, that has implications for every aspect of our personal and public behavior: all of our actions, all of our choices, all of our decisions. If God exists, denying him in our public life—whether we do it explicitly like Nietzsche or implicitly by our silence—cannot serve the common good, because it amounts to worshiping the unreal in the place of the real.

Religious believers built this country. Christians played a leading role in that work. This is a fact, not an opinion. Our entire framework of human rights is based on a religious understanding of the dignity of the human person as a child of his or her Creator. Nietzsche once said that “convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

In fact, the opposite is often true. Convictions can be the seeds of truth incarnated in a person’s individual will. The right kinds of convictions guide us forward. They give us meaning. Not acting on our convictions is cowardice. As Christians we need to live our convictions in the public square with charity and respect for others, but also firmly, with courage and without apology. Anything less is a form of theft from the moral witness we owe to the public discussion of issues. We can never serve the common good by betraying who we are as believers or compromising away what we hold to be true.

These words might be interpreted by some as a call to religious specificity in the public square, yet later in the same piece he points out:

Christianity and Judaism see life very differently. For both of them, history is a place of human decision. At every moment of our lives, we’re asked to choose for good or for evil. Therefore, time has weight. It has meaning. The present is vitally important as the instant that will never come again; the moment where we are not determined by outside forces but self-determined by our free will. Our past actions make us who we are today. But each “today” also offers us another chance to change our developing history. The future is the fruit of our past and present choices, but it’s always unknown, because each successive moment presents us with a new possibility. [Emphasis added.]

It is my understanding that Mormons also share this perspective on free will (Lowell?) and therefore should share the same voice in public. This is really a marvelous piece by Archbishop Chaput and it should be cherished and read again and again.

Lowell: Yes, we absolutely share that perspective. Any member of my church would tell you that the paragraph just above from Archbishop Chaput could have been spoken by any church president at any time. The principles of free will and freedom of conscience are at the very center of our faith. Indeed, we believe that the reason humankind is here on earth is to choose between good and evil. We call it "free agency," or "the ability and freedom to choose good or evil;" that is what the Archbishop is talking about.

Brief digression: This discussion puts me in mind of my favorite comment in Letter XV of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters: "The present is the point at which time touches eternity . . . in it alone, freedom and actuality are offered.”

It should also be contrasted with Al Mohler who looks at the decline of the church in Europe, specifically in Germany and opines

The article avoids any reference to a theological explanation to Germany's crisis. People do not remain loyal to institutions when they no longer believe in their importance. The importance of the church is essentially tied to the reality of the Gospel.

Now, if that is indeed true, given Mohler's concerns about voting for a Mormon because they do not hold the true gospel (oh, give me a break Lowell thinks the same thing about me, besides even Christianity Today says Lowell and I are friends), should not the Mormon church be failing as well? And yet the opposite appears to be the case. Clearly there is more to this church thing than just theology, which is why theology is way down the list of things to concern oneself with when deciding on a candidate.

Now, on to media bias – how come nothing like this is being written about Romney and Reid? Could it be because it would spoil the MSM narrative about Mormons?

Finally, Ryan Sager gets really ugly:

And one final point: Expect a lot of whining about "anti-Mormon bias" from the Romney camp. It's their way of playing the victim card, and it seems, so far in the campaign, to be the first crowbar his supporters reach for when they feel attacked (see here). There may well be some anti-Mormon bias out there in the country, but I assure the Romney folks that there's a lot less of that in the world than, say, anti-Italian bias, sexism, and racism. So, really, he's not the candidate in this campaign with bias problems to overcome.

He is flat out wrong about his assessment of relative bias in the electorate. People say things about Mormons every day they would never dream of saying about any other people group. If there is less anti-Mormon bias in the world than say, racism, it is because on a global basis Mormons are a relatively small group and most people in the world don't even know who they are, but what bias does exist in this country is widespread and more virulent than other forms of bias.

No Mormon bias? You remember those statistics? 87% of news pieces written about Romney mention his faith:

Doing the same comparison for "Rudy Giuliani" and "Catholic" we find that only 2 percent of news stories happen to mention his faith. If we look at "John McCain" and "Episcopalian" we find that only 0.01% of news stories mention his faith. The evidence of media bias is overwhelming.

As to the victim card . . . I am not a Mormon, I experience no direct victimhood in Mormon bias. I am sorry Sager was apparently unjustly pilloried for something he did not do, but it seems to me that his contention that there is less anti-Mormon bias than racism or sexism is an attempt to make sure "the right people" get victim status. Isn't that the very definition of bias? If he doesn't want to hear "whining" then maybe, just maybe, he and everyone else should stop bringing it up. We sure don't have any trouble finding stuff to talk about here everyday . . . .

Lowell adds a bemused comment: From an entirely personal perspective (translation: I am speaking only for myself) I find claims of Mormon "victimhood" puzzling and always have. We Mormons simply don't sit around and talk about ourselves as an oppressed minority. I have heard more of that talk from Hugh Hewitt and my friend John than I have ever heard within any Mormon gathering. (I'm not criticizing them one iota for that, just making the observation about how we see ourselves.) Yes, in the early days of our church we were badly persecuted, but it's quite telling that as a lifelong Mormon, I never heard about that history until I was an adult– and then I had to make an effort to learn it. In Sunday School in my youth we never learned about those matters; we didn't discuss it around the dinner table; and even now when the subject comes up in gospel study the emphasis is on what we can learn from our religious forebears about Christian discipleship and commitment, and from the patience with which they endured persecution. There's simply no celebration of victimhood going on among us. That's just my perspective, but I think the overwhelming majority of Mormons share it.

Now, I also consider Mormons to be a fair-minded folk. We are in the political campaign season and one of our own is running for president. When it looks like he is being treated differently than other candidates because of his religion, the almost universal (and unsurprising) response is to say, "Hey! Now wait just a minute." If Ryan Sager can't see the bias, and can't see that response as natural and justifiable, then I'm sorry, he's just blind.